The world's biggest work-from-home experiment has been triggered by coronavirus
Hong Kong (CNN Business) In offices across Asia, desks are empty and the phones are quiet,
as the region grapples with a deadly virus.
In major hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore, shops are shuttered,
public facilities are closed, and there are few people wandering the
usually-bustling financial districts.
Instead, millions of people are holed up in their apartments, in
what may be the world's biggest work-from-home experiment.
The novel coronavirus outbreak,
which began in Wuhan, China, in December, has now infected more than 67,000
people and killed over 1,500, the vast majority in mainland China.
Around 60 million people in China were put under full or partial
lockdown in January as the government tried to contain the virus. Restrictions
have been implemented in many other places too -- but there is also pressure for companies to get back
to work, with Chinese President Xi Jinping warning this week that
the country needed to stabilize its economy.
In an attempt to limit social contact to slow the spread of the
virus, known officially as Covid-19, millions of employees in China and other
affected areas are currently working from home.
For some employees, like teachers who have conducted classes digitally
for weeks, working from home can be a nightmare.
But in other sectors, this unexpected experiment has been so well
received that employers are considering adopting it as a more permanent
measure. For those who advocate more flexible working options, the past few
weeks mark a possible step toward widespread -- and long-awaited -- reform.
Frustrations and unexpected benefits
In China, the outbreak has taken a toll on the world's second
biggest economy, which had already been struggling due to the US trade war and
a slump in domestic demand. Now, businesses have been closed for weeks, raising fears of
mass lay-offs, unemployment, and housing foreclosures.
One estimate warned that the outbreak could cost China $62 billion in lost growth.
With authorities urging businesses to reopen, employees across
China are beginning to work from home. More than half of workers in the capital
Beijing plan to do so instead of going into the office, according to state-run newspaper China Daily.
Tech companies including Tencent, Alibaba and Microsoft have told
CNN their staff will work from home for the next one to two weeks, citing
health and safety concerns.
The governments of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macao have ordered
civil servants to work from home and asked private employers to do so where
possible, with only essential staff or emergency service providers still at the
office.
Civil servants in Hong Kong have
been working from home for weeks, since the Lunar New Year holiday ended in
late January. A Hong Kong government statement said it "appealed to other
employers to make flexible work arrangements for employees in order to reduce
contacts among people."
Schools in many of these places have been suspended -- so teachers
are instead conducting classes through digital learning tools, such as Google
Hangouts and other video conferencing software. One Hong Kong school requires
students to "check in" digitally and do lesson tasks online with
hourly deadlines, so if students skip a class, it leaves a digital record.
But bringing the classroom online has proved frustrating for some
educators -- especially those who work with children who have special learning
needs or disabilities.
"We use a lot of hands-on learning, so it's been really
challenging trying to make our online learning meaningful for the kids when
we're not in a classroom environment," said Karen, a special education
teacher in Hong Kong, who requested a pseudonym to avoid identifying the
school.
Like other schools, Karen and her colleagues have relied on digital
tools such as video calls and Google Docs -- but challenges are made harder
because her students need a lot of adult support.
"The parents are also working from home, and are having to
also be teachers -- it's almost an impossible situation," she said.
Special needs students also often rely on the structure, routine,
and human interaction provided by school -- which means remote learning can be
unsettling or frustrating.
But for other digital-based sectors, working from home has instead
been surprisingly effective, say employers in the field.
"It's a test run that we didn't really choose to implement,
but we're quite happy with it," said Brice Lamarque, sales and accounts director
at a web and branding agency in Hong Kong. Nearly all the agency's employees
have been working from home this month -- and will continue for as long as the
Hong Kong government advises, he said.
"Before (the epidemic) happened, we were not really keen on
letting our team work from home because we value collaboration," said
Lamarque. "But this experience actually showed us that the whole team
collaborates quite well even if they're not in the same room, so we're looking
at adding that into our employee benefits ... maybe two to three weeks a
year."
However, he admitted that a big part of the work-from-home success
owed to the digital nature of their company and industry -- employees only
require a computer and internet connection, meaning they can work from
anywhere.
Joe Hasberry, a Hong Kong employee at an asset management firm, has
also been working from home -- but unlike Lamarque, he and other coworkers will
be returning to the office next week. The company needs to meet with clients
and visitors, meaning it's hard to keep working from home beyond a few weeks.
"Some guys at my office are more (in) investor relations --
it's much more people-centric, so that part of the job wouldn't be able to be
done from home," he said.
Meanwhile, some people face social pressure from employers to go
into the office despite government guidance to work from home. Employees in
customer service industries or front-of-house roles often don't have the option
to work remotely.
In China, factory workers also don't have this choice -- instead,
those able to return will face stringent health and safety measures each day,
like having their body temperatures checked and hands disinfected before
entering the workplace, according to state-run media Xinhua.
Some employees in Hong Kong told CNN that they were frustrated that
the arrangement could put them at a higher risk of infection, heightened by
memories of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak that
devastated the city.Is this the future of work?
Although digitally-based industries may be better suited to work
from home, advocates have been pushing for years to
make work more flexible, arguing that it can be done with the right
infrastructure, to the benefit of both employees and employers.
The past decade has seen expanding opportunities for remote working
and increasing remote job listings -- and this shift is largely due to
new technologies and changing family demographics.
The movement has been embraced by many parents who say the ability
to work from home makes it easier to juggle childcare and a career. Many
families who can't afford nannies or day care face a difficult decision when
they have a baby, with one of the parents -- often the woman -- having to sacrifice career advancement to
care for their child.
The option to work from home doesn't just empower women -- it makes
it easier for working fathers to step into that role too, in a step toward
gender equality that benefits all parties.
Technological advancements have also made working from home more
accessible across all sectors.
"Nowadays, compared to 10 years ago, it is a lot easier to
access emails remotely, cloud-based filing, dial-in to calls and video
conferencing remotely," said Marie Swarbreck, founder of FLEXImums, a
company in Hong Kong that connects job applicants to remote or flexible work
opportunities. "The technology and software is available for people to
work remotely."
She acknowledged that the current work-from-home situation in Hong
Kong has produced "extra challenges which are out of our control" --
for instance, working parents have to care for children whose classes have been
suspended. Homes that are empty, quiet, and perfect for remote working on a
typical day are now filled with people and distractions.
But these are extraordinary circumstances -- not the norm, she
said. Current challenges don't mean that working from home is ineffective, or
that it shouldn't be implemented more widely beyond the outbreak.
"Being able to create a workplace that welcomes and encourages
working from home, remotely, flexibly, is certainly, in my opinion, the way
regular daily life will become more and more."
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